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Sure enough, the tracks on the beach led toward the old manor up on the cliffs that looked down on the rest of town. “Well, I’ll be. Didn’t seem the type, old Louise.”
“To own a dog, or to hire a fellow like me?”
“Both,” Ginny quipped, matching his grin. It was a nice surprise. The way he talked, all educated and with a voice like polished wood, she would have thought he’d be too stuck up to make a joke at his own expense.
The pirate-stranger stooped down to pat the dog affectionately, then looked up at her. “I’m Freddy Keats, by the way.”
She took his offered hand and shook it firmly, the way she had when her pa’s friends chuckled about the “little miss” going out on the boat. “Ginny Atkins.”
The German shepherd’s low whine told her she’d stopped petting him, a mistake she quickly fixed. “Why don’t you tell me this fine boy’s name, and we’ll all be introduced.”
Freddy knelt down on the corner of the blanket. “This is Jeeves.”
“Where’d he get a moniker like that?”
“A book, I think Miss Cavendish said.”
Ginny snorted. “Figures. Everyone around this town loves books.”
“I take it you’re part of the Blackout Book Club, then?” He held upHamlet. “One of my favorites. What do you think of it so far?”
For a moment, Ginny wavered, about to say that it was just super, and she couldn’t wait to discuss it. The fellow looked almost like Jeeves, so earnest and excited that it felt mean to tell him the truth.
“I’ve only just started,” she admitted, deciding on a compromise. “Shakespeare wasn’t much for plain speaking, was he?”
“It was plainer at the time than it is now. Language changes.”
She gave him a flat look and opened to a random page, speaking through her nose. “‘I have of late—but wherefore I know not—lost all my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily with my disposition that this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory.’ Don’t try to tell me anyoneevertalked like that.”
This time when Freddy smiled, she noticed that the skin under the corner of his good eye crinkled like William Holden’s inGolden Boy. “That’s the poetry of it, Ginny. Besides, no one should everreadShakespeare. It only comes alive when it’s performed.”
“I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a stage show.” Other than a makeshift Christmas pageant now and then when Pa hustled them into the island church, but that didn’t count.
“Well then, we’ll have to get you to one someday, won’t we?”
“Not a chance,”she ought to have said.“Because I’m dating a nice boy from back home, and anyway, girls like me don’t go to city theater shows.”
But the idea was nice, and she found herself saying, “Would you want to join us? For the book club, I mean. We meet every other Saturday morning.”
Surprise flickered across his face, then the smile was back. “You know ... I think I will. As long as I can step away from my work for that long.”
Good. Poor Avis needed more bodies in the chairs for her club to please Ye Olde Dragon Cavendish.
“I’ve got to know,” she said. “Miss Cavendish pays you just to walk her dog?”
He laughed. “I’ve been hired for gardening, mostly, once planting season starts.”
“Ah, sure. So what branch of the service were you in?”
Freddy visibly started, looking down as if to check to make sure he wasn’t in uniform, then relaxed. “Ah, small town. Word probably gets around, doesn’t it?”
“Wasn’t that.” She ticked off the reasons on her fingers. “You got that injury somewhere, and that patch isn’t much faded, so probably new. You stand straighter than a fencepost and walk like you’re marching. And there’s a dog-tag chain poking out around your neck.”
His hand shot straight to it, tucking it away. “You guessed it. I was a pilot in the army air forces. Got shot down on our third crossing, guarding a convoy of merchant ships headed for the English Channel.”
Ginny nodded, focusing on Jeeves instead of Freddy and his eyepatch. He probably had enough folks staring at him, and besides, seeing an actual soldier with lifelong scars made the war feel more real—and more dangerous. “And where’d you live before Derby?”
“New Hampshire area,” he said vaguely, like a fellow used to naming a small town that no one’d ever heard of. His choice, of course, but even if the only Long Island folks had ever heard of was in New York, Ginny would have gone on for days if he’d asked her where she was from. But he didn’t. In fact, he reached forHamletas if he was going to steer the conversation that way again.
